Peter Wild

Counterparts

Each morning, he takes himself out of the wardrobe and dresses. There are freshly pressed rows of himself placed there each night by the creator and each morning he and his brothers dress accordingly until all of them look like one another and are ready for the day and for the world. From the moment he appears on the street to the moment he disrobes again at night, you wouldn’t know he was any different to you or me. If you were to look as you passed him on your way to the newsagent for a newspaper or to the sandwich shop for a sandwich, you wouldn’t think twice. You probably wouldn’t even look all that hard. If you saw anything you’d just see a man, probably, in a suit. It’s the same at the office. He appears at the office each day at more or less the same time. He performs more or less the same functions, albeit with the odd seasonal twist here and there. He laughs when others laugh. He helpfully sends on the same joke-y email attachments. He has a broad list of adequate responses for topics as diverse as ‘The TV Last Night’, ‘The Weather’, ‘The Sport’ and ‘The Wife Said’. He was built to cope with the unexpected.

And yet, saying all of that, as he withdrew, slug-like, from his suit and his skin each night, he couldn’t help but wonder what it was about him that stopped them loving him as they loved each other. Life wasn’t like maths, he concluded. Some things didn’t add up, no matter how hard you tried.

Peter Wild comes from a music journalism background. He is the editor of Perverted by Language, The Empty Page and Paint a Vulgar Picture, (anthologies of fiction inspired by The Fall, Sonic Youth and The Smiths) published by Serpent’s Tail and Harper Collins. Peter is the co-founder of http://www.bookmunch.co.uk/. His writing and fiction have appeared in Noo Journal, Word Riot, The Big Issue, Nude magazine, Alt Sounds, City Life, 3AM magazine and Eyeballkid. He lives in Stockport.